Tempting Fate
by tsohg-a-ma-i
Summary: Reincarnation is a curious thing. I never thought much of it while I was still alive, much less actually considered it a legitimate possibility. But then again, I've been wrong before... And then bring Inuyasha into the picture. Oh, wait...there goes the plot. Kaede!OC In which knowing the future was nice while it lasted.
1. Chapter 1

**Tempting Fate — Part 1**

I thought dying would be, well…different.

Turns out…it's all in how you look at it. As for me, I really didn't know what I was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't this. Excuse the total decimation of the fourth wall here, but, I mean, come on—I'm sure you've all read, watched, or at least heard about InuYasha, right? I remember the first it popped up on my radar, I was around fifteen or so. That was sometime in 2012 therebouts and the whole thing kicked off in the nineties or whatever—so it was already around ten years old more or less. To me, back then, ten-year-old anime was _old_, and cartoons were for kids, and I was a fifteen-year-old Harry Potter snob and above all that shit.

Still didn't stop me from succumbing to curiosity at some point.

I powered through the whole series, including movies, in less than three days. Couldn't tell you what drove me, but I was determined to get to the end of it. Thinking back, maybe it was fate (may the gods curse such a thing for existing). I came, I saw, I loved, laughed, and cried…and then I moved on with my life. But I never forgot. Never. Not even after I died.

Oh, and apparently reincarnation is actually a thing.

And take it from someone who knows—I've found it doesn't really matter who you are, or what you do in life. The end result is fairly unanimous for just about everyone. From honor student to serial killer, no matter what you do…you're pretty much fucked, either way. The universe has a grudge against _everyone_, and I don't care if mommy says you're her little angel, you're not going to get out of this one. Because everyone has to die sometime.

Mine was a real fuckin' mess, lemme tell ya. Not pretty. It must've been so horrible, that the universe itself deigned my existence intolerable because, evidently, it kicked me out and stuck me in a new one somewhere between one life and the next. Now, I was _this_ one's problem…and let's just say things weren't exactly looking up.

So, here's the thing… I came into the new world much the same as I had exited the last one, with horrible, screaming, bloody _death_. Yeah. First of all, childbirth is not something anyone should have to go through, much less remember _experiencing_. Second of all, I don't even think it's _natural_. Otherwise, so many women wouldn't have to die during the process of doing it.

If I had any idea what the hell was actually happening at the time, and sheer terror and confusion wasn't clouding my poor, infantile mind, I probably would have hated myself for what I did to my poor mother. As it was…I didn't quite fully understand my situation until I was around two years old, and by that time, I had already come to the solid realization that there was no going back. You can't turn back time or reverse what's been done. Life doesn't work that way…so far as _this_ particular reality went, mostly.

Now, I've learned a fair few things about reincarnation from my new big sister. Apparently the souls of the dead can transcend time, space—just about anything. Souls are power, and each time a soul is reincarnated, that power grows with experience. What makes a soul reincarnate? Who the hell knows? All I know is that I sure as hell didn't ask for this.

In some ways, I guess I was lucky. In this world, you manage to kill your own mother coming out of her, you're pretty much screwed six ways to Sunday. Not a lot of people were willing to take in orphans. In fact, you weren't safe even if you _weren't_ an orphan! Some families just had too many kids, and couldn't take care of them. So, what to do? Why, abandon said child at a convenient shrine and hope for the best, of course…and that some youkai didn't come along and eat the poor defenseless thing. But I digress…

Like I said, I was lucky, if you want to call it that. I had a big sister who loved me very much, and was pure hearted enough to forgive me for taking our mother away. She took care of me, and made sure I grew healthy and strong, survived the winter, and all that. On the other hand, my sister's name was Kikyo, so _luck_ might not have had anything to do with it…

A lifetime ago, Kikyo had been a fairytale character—and not one of my favorites, just gotta say. I knew her mostly as the frigid, vengeful wraith of a dead woman, who wanted to drag cute, cuddly, irascible Inuyasha down to hell with her. And Kaede? I had to say, I thought the sibling relationship between the two was just plain bizarre. You're brought back from the dead, and all you want to do is drag your old boyfriend down to hell with you? But that was just a story I heard once. Kikyo and Kaede weren't just made up characters anymore. _I_ was Kaede, and Kikyo was _Onee_-_sama_.

And I'd die a hundred times over again before I would let anything bad happen to her. Unfortunately, the twist my existence put in fate reared its first ugly head when I asked _Onee_-_sama_ if I could be a _miko_ too.

Her serene, beautiful face was marred with a frown as her hand rested over my heart. She removed it, then her callused fingers caressed my cheeks as her brown eyes searched mine for something I could not name. "How careless. I had not realized until now… It is no wonder the village has been attacked so many times in the last two winters."

My brow furrowed in confusion. "What is it, _Onee_-_sama_? What's wrong?"

She shook her head, running a hand through my unruly, shoulder length locks. (I wondered if it would look like _Onee_-_sama's_ when it grew out). "Nothing. I have simply overlooked something that may have saved much grief…" She closed her eyes solemnly, then opened them again to fix me with a gentle smile that surprised me no matter how many times she favored me with it. "You are a very special child, Kaede-chan. Worry not. Big Sister will protect you."

The sentiment sent a warm pang through my chest, but still, I could not help but ask quietly, "…Who will protect _you_?"

She froze, her dark eyes widening just a fraction before settling back into their tranquil preset, however, a certain sorrowful sentiment rested behind them as she brushed my bangs from my face tenderly. "I am a _miko_," she said softly, as if the answer explained itself.

I steeled my resolve when I asked a question I found myself asking more and more as I continued learning this strange new language, "What does that _mean_?"

Amusement danced in her eyes as she stood gracefully and took my hand in hers, leading me down the road towards the village shrine. It was not the village of Edo that I remembered from a fairytale a lifetime ago. Kikyo traveled from time to time, exterminating threats that approached the village, but they were growing worse, and it was wearing on her greatly. "That depends on which _miko_ you ask," she finally replied.

We left the village within the week, and headed south. It was safer that way. She didn't say as much, but as we continued to travel from temple to temple, shrine to shrine, I knew the demons that inevitably followed were after _me_. Onee-sama was powerful. Very powerful. But she worked _hard_ to get that way.

"Raw power is unpredictable, Kaede," she warned me quietly as we passed a bridge that had been taken out by the strengthened current of the swollen river rushing along beside us. "Power is not strength unless you can control it. You must be especially careful to remember this from now on."

From that point on, we stayed longer at the shrines we passed in our travels. At each one, I learned something new from those who inhabited them. We even stopped at a place where a fearsome red _oni_ was sealed away in a pagoda. That was where we met the grand monk Yatsuro and his disciple…Tsubaki. Her hair was black, her eyes an unnerving shade of blue. We stayed there the longest, and I was… Believe it or not, I was happy. For a time.

"You learn quickly," a coy voice demurred from behind as my arrow hit its target.

I whirled around, holding my bow reflexively before me as a barrier sparked to life briefly before sparking out again just as quickly. The strands of my loosely bound hair whipped against my cheek in my alarm. I hadn't even _sensed_ her. _Still_ couldn't sense her.

Wait.

My eyes narrowed. "Shikigami." And then I promptly charged the haft of my bow full of purifying energy and slashed the illusion right in half. The false Tsubaki faded, leaving two halves of a paper-made doll to drift gracefully towards the earth. I then turned to look up into the bows of the nearby maple tree as a slow clapping reached my ears.

"_Very_ good." I couldn't help but find her tone condescending as she descended almost as gracefully as a falling leaf, her footsteps making no sound as they touched down to the ground. She stood and smiled, her brows arched. She was beautiful, yes, but now that I looked at her more closely, there was also an arrogant lilt to her lips, and a sheen of faint cruelty behind her pearly blue eyes. She frightened me.

Still, I lowered my bow and bowed at the waist accordingly. Tsubaki was a grand miko of very high standing after all. Disrespect of any kind was unacceptable. "I apologize, Tsubaki-sama. I wasn't expecting you here."

"No, but you evidently still have your wits about you…" She stepped closer, closing the distance between us, each tiny foot placed daintily after the other, balanced, as if walking on a tightrope; somehow, it still came off as predatory. I had to fight not to flinch away as she reached forward with one finger under my chin and tilted my face more towards the light, her eyes calculating and thoughtful as she spoke plainly, "You're not as pretty as your sister…but you might yet grow into your own sort of beauty in time." Her wickedly shaped lips curled into a devious smile. "Certainly, with that power of yours, you will no doubt surpass that woman…"

I frowned at her remarks, unsettled. Still, I only replied with, "Onee-sama says power is the reason youkai follow us. They will come to this place too eventually… They always come."

To my astonishment, there was just the slightest softening to the harsh pierce of her eyes and she moved her hand to rest atop my head lightly. "Ah, yes…youkai do tend to flock towards such precious things, don't they?" She moved so her face was very close to mine then, and whispered with a conspiratorial smile, "…But we need not be afraid of youkai, you and me. There is much to be gained from such creatures, after all."

I blinked once, slightly stunned, though the notion was not new to me. All the same, I asked quietly, "…What sorts of things?"

Tsubaki's smile grew. "Are you afraid of youkai, Kaede-chan?"

Slowly, after thinking about it for a long moment, I shook my head. "There are worse things to fear."

The woman smoothed down my bangs, and her eyes glowed as if confirming something. "Smart girl." She straightened, and took my hand in hers. "Come along then," she said brusquely, the smile still in place on her razor edged lips, "and I will teach you something useful." She paused and eyed me knowingly. "Or would you rather continue breathing practice with your Onee-sama?"

I narrowed my eyes. They'd grown sharp and narrow from the habit. I was good at picking up on things, guessing the motives of others, and I was almost positive I was being manipulated for some purpose or other… But _this_ Tsubaki—though vain, cruel, arrogant, and a hundred other things—did not seem quite so malevolent as I knew her to be in her intent this time. She held my hand gently, and I could feel the thrum of her power. Though not as potent as Onee-sama's…it was still terribly strong. What's more, Tsubaki seemed to be very straight forward.

I could only imagine that, unlike Onee-sama, Tsubaki's teachings would be just as straightforward as she was in demeanor.

With that, I steeled my resolve and stated with only a hint of disdain in my voice, "…I already _know_ how to breathe."

Tsubaki's smile grew even wider

* * *

I handled the small, drawstring bag carefully, running the silk tassels through my fingers to feel the smoothness against my skin. I could feel the outline of beads within the embroidered cloth satchel, and hear the soft sounds as they jingled against each other almost musically. Kikyo sent me one of those looks she'd been favoring me with for several months. I'd learned to ignore them for the most part. But then she spoke, her voice piercing though my far away thoughts like one of her arrows.

"What did Tsubaki-sama give you, Kaede-chan?" she asked softly.

I looked up at her slowly as we walked side by side, and carefully measured my response. I shrugged. There was no reason to be dishonest. "It's merely a parting gift… A spell."

Kikyo nodded gravely. "Did you make sure to thank her properly?"

"She said as long as I use it wisely, and return to her one day alive to tell of it, then it will be thanks enough," I repeated the words said to me, then took a moment to examine my sister carefully. Her eyes were cast downwards and unreadable. But Kikyo was my sister, and I knew her well. "You do not get along with her," I ventured without preamble.

She raised her eyes to look at me solemnly, and stated plainly, "She despises me."

"She does." I agreed, nodding with a similar sentiment to my tone.

She seemed to hesitate for a long moment before asking nearly inaudibly, "…Do you despise me too, little sister?"

I stared straight ahead of me for a time, then looked upon her with conviction. "Never." Feeling bolder, I stepped closer to thread my fingers through her hand gently, and elaborated, "Life is not a popularity contest, you know."

When her eyes danced with laughter, and her fingers squeezed lightly around mine, I felt more accomplished than when I had subjugated my first youkai with Tsubaki-sama.

* * *

We ended up crossing paths with Tsubaki-sama again not too long after—a year or two, maybe. We stumbled into each other every now and again, this time inadvertently happening upon the same extermination gig. A whole hoard of youkai were going around appearing out of thin air and wantonly laying waste to any surrounding villages or travelers unfortunate enough to be in the same general area. It was really growing to become quite a nuisance. We were just another method of pest control, quite frankly. We decided to work together.

Tsubaki-sama wielded a naginata that she hadn't had the last time I'd seen her, and Kikyo held her bow, poised, solemn, and graceful as ever. I was still growing, and my long bow was taller than me. It wasn't exactly practical in an open combat environment—not yet at least. Instead, I'd been forced to grow a bit innovative in my eagerness to stay by my sister's side. A boy near my age in a village we passed had taken a liking to me. And, as is common among small, besotted boys…they have a nasty tendency to _torment_ the girls they like. I got a good face full of pig shit before I managed to wrestle the damned slingshot from the fucker's grubby little hands. I got in a lot of practice with wrestling and fist fighting in that village, and I never gave the slingshot back.

With the right reinforcements and some vindictive creativity, I'd improved upon the prankster's favored firearm extensively. It's not like I was slinging bullets or anything, but the instrument was no longer a child's toy—let's just leave it at that. It was easy enough to charge rocks with my spiritual power and sling them at the enemy, but then I'd also mastered the art of crafting sacred beads that were used in rosaries and other such holy accessories. It was often Onee-sama would find me whittling away at the craft incessantly ether on the road or in my free time. There were also blessed bells you could imbue with certain spells to cause excess havoc on your impure enemies. My favorite—and something I made a priority to stock up on in the trusty, embroidered projectiles pouch that always swung from my waist—was a rather nasty spell-weaved bell I'd come up with myself, one that exploded with compressed spiritual energy and left a rather sizable hole behind. If, by chance, it didn't go all the way through the target, the lingering purity spread until the poor bastard was nothing but a pile of shimmery, purified ash.

It was crude, but very efficient if I didn't manage to run out of sacred artifacts to hurl. And even then, I always had a plethora of pointy objects hidden away on my person to cause pain with. 'Armed to the teeth,' wasn't an expression many in this part of the world or era were familiar with, but I was determined to make it stick.

At times Kikyo and Tsubaki fought back to back. One of Kikyo's sacred arrows fired straight down the shrieking gullet of a flying serpentine youkai and right out the other end of it, purifying most of the long, twisty body, and leaving the gory bits and pieces of its remains to shower down around us like a gory hail storm. Tsubaki was similarly formidable. Her naginata whirled and cut through muscle, scale, and tendon like butter. I stayed mostly to the sidelines, ducking behind different rocks and cover, never staying in one place for too long, studying the battle with a tactical eye, and taking calculated shots as openings were revealed to me. A demented grin broke out across my face as I watched a green, flying eyeball youkai explode in a spectacular show of bursting, acid-green slime; it reminded me of a rather more than a little repulsive variety of firework…

When it was over, I went around the battlefield as Tsubaki exchanged some snide remarks with my sister, routing around and searching for any beads or bells that could be reused or repurposed. It was then I felt a telltale prickling at the back of my neck, creeping as if a hundred spiders were skittering across my skin. And, indeed, as I sensed movement out of the corner of my eye, I turned to spot a rather larger than normal spider crawling out from one of the still twitching corpses that surrounded me. Abnormally _small_ for youkai standards…but it _was_ a youkai, made evident by its three glowing red eyes and similarly colored body. What's more, recognition struck me in the gut like a flying steel fist as it hissed at me.

My eyes widened, and I felt myself moving forward reflexively, leaping over severed limbs and reeking carcasses faster than I thought myself capable of. But it had more legs than I did, and was significantly quicker, not to mention quick on the uptake as well. The vicious expression on my face clearly reflected the murderous intentions running through my mind, and I had a feeling that if someone were to have looked in my eyes at that moment, they would have seen horrendous acts reflected within them. The cunning creature surely had self-preservation first and foremost on its twisted little priorities list, because it sure turned tail and ran swiftly enough. I wouldn't be having any of that though.

"You're not going anywhere, you slimy, evil, motherfu—HAH! _Got you_!" I was so sure of it when I unslung the weapon from my shoulder and slammed down the purity charged haft of my bow with an uncommon vengeance. But it dodged nimbly on its spindly digits, and the blunt-force weapon splattered the remains of an oni's thigh where it had been perched just moments previously, flecking blood and viscous fluid onto my cheeks. It felt like hot rain. Again I struck, and again, and again, with a single-minded purpose to my movements, a manic wildness to my features I couldn't quite remember having in this life. I always tried to be like Kikyo—steady, constant, controlled. For the most part, I was successful. Years of discipline helped. But to be completely honest, deep down…that wasn't really me. I was constantly one step away from the edge and without her to keep me grounded, I knew I'd walk straight off to plunge into the abyss that was this unknown world I'd ended up in. Because in the end, the feel of hot rain on my face is what felt the most real.

Given the chance, I would use any method, no matter how base or dastardly it might be, to take out that fucking spider before it became Naraku and got anywhere _near_ my precious sister.

"You can't take Onee-sama! Go to hell, you evil bastard! Ha!" Another strike, landing in the questionably colorful entrails of a boar demon. More gore. More blood. More rain. No spider. "Hah!" Another thrust. Just missed it. "Hyah!" Breaths coming faster. Body slowing down. Need to kill it. Fast. Squish it. Grind it into the dirt. Destroy. "_I'll kill you!_"

"Kaede!"

The sharp sound of Kikyo's warning cutting through the air made me freeze just as I was about to slam my bow down on the hateful center eye of the arachnid, and in the time it took me to flinch and turn my face to meet my sister's incredulously large eyes…two fangs had already buried themselves in my shoulder. Pain. Hot, and searing, it started slow, but spread like a wildfire through my veins.

"Hahaha…" The creature's voice was contorted with several layers of malice as it dug its fangs ever deeper into the soft flesh where my neck met my shoulder bone. "Foolish girl. You will die for your insolence. I will have my revenge. Starting with you…and that _woman_."

An unfamiliar strangled sound left my throat, and as the barbed incisors finally ripped themselves from my skin, my knees buckled, giving out beneath me as a strange numbness began to pulse through my body at an alarming rate. I heard the _fwish fwish_ of arrows ripping through the air as the creature that would become Naraku made a narrow escape, dark, hateful laughter following it as it went. A vision of the grey, murky sky above was all I could see, as it appeared as if my body had lost all will to move. In the next moments I was staring up at none other than the dark figure of Tsubaki as she looked down on me, a strange expression in her eerie eyes. It seemed more akin to fascination than to any sort of real concern for my wellbeing.

"Interesting…" she said, crouching down to hold my limp forearm experimentally in her hand and watching as she released it to drop lifelessly back to the ground at my side. She moved closer to get a look at my face next and asked, "Does it hurt, Kaede-chan?" Another unrecognizable sound of distress strained its way passed my locked jaw as my face contorted and another spasm of pain wracked through my trembling body. It seemed to be enough of an answer in itself. My insides felt like they were melting. The beautiful woman tapped her chin and tsked quietly as she crouched over me and hummed to herself with a thoughtful look, "And you held such promise too. A shame it had to end this way. I wonder if that beastly woman will let me examine your body after you are dead. The properties of these demon toxins could prove quite useful if I'm able to extract them…"

She broke off at the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. "It got away," came the uncharacteristically distressed voice and a blast of relief hit me as Kikyo's face soon entered my line of sight. Her expression held more emotion that I had ever seen upon it, contorted into one of anguish and despair. "Kaede! Kaede, listen to me, you must concentrate your reiki—" she placed her hand upon my rapidly rising and falling chest. "_here_. Focus on the beat of your own heart. Do _not_ stop. Do you understand my words?"

"O-onee-sama…" I choked out, tears swelling in my eyes as the pain raged, threatening to make my mind go numb with it. Still, I managed to say, "I'm s-s-sorry—"

"Do not speak," she admonished sharply, shouldering her bow and scooping her arms under my too small form, ignoring the languid glare Tsubaki fixed upon her. "Do not think. The poison will spread faster when I move you. You must do as I say. Focus. Breathe. Just like in meditation. Do you remember?"

Of course I remembered. All the times I sat at her side, _seething_ at having to go through more breathing exercises and prayer when there were so many other things I could be learning that were actually helpful—that would be of _use_. But no matter how I pleaded and begged, every morning at dawn, without fail, Kikyo would force me through the steps of meditation until it became commonplace. It was just another part of routine. Second nature. Eventually I learned to stop complaining about it, and just relished the quiet peace I felt beside my sister, matching my breaths to hers. It was so tranquil and serene that I almost thought I could hear our hearts beating in tandem as well.

And now, I obeyed her commands just as I had always done, gathering the alarmingly sporadic fluctuations of my reiki and forcefully calming them, along with my breathing—in, out, in, out—then gathering and redirecting the flow towards my heart. It didn't stop the pain, but allowed me to focus completely on a task, separating myself from the burning. My turbulent fears and emotions eventually calmed as well until there was nothing but the familiar thrumming warmth in my chest as my sister carried me away from the field of dead monsters.

She and Tsubaki exchanged words at some point, I noticed outwardly, but I wasn't paying attention to them. My focus was entirely on what was happening _within_ my body. It was a war. A terrible, burning, bloody war, that threatened to end my existence entirely. The poison had a will of its own and battled relentlessly against the barrier of purity that guarded my heart. The outside world fell away until it was just _it_ and me. The toxic presence inside me raged with hatred, greed, lust, and malice. It wanted to consume me whole, but Kikyo's stern instructions did me well. As long as it couldn't get to my heart, I found myself able to hold onto some spark of strength, retreating behind the flickering barrier it created like a terrified child in a corner.

Time and perseverance lent me confidence, however. There was a bit of an epiphany when I realized there were instructions Kikyo _hadn't_ given me. I was hesitant to try at first, but it became plainly evident that the poison _hated_ the purity, and so, gradually, tentatively, I began to expand it experimentally, inch-by-inch. I finally started to gain footholds in the war inside me. I pushed and pushed against the ruthless force until I quickly learned to be just as ruthless, forcing it back brazenly until I had it surrounded at its source. At this point, I could have closed in on it like an ocean, extinguishing its presence from my body entirely. But instead…something inside told me to wait. Surprisingly…I listened.

It was like that for the longest time. At a standstill, it could have been hours, or days, even weeks. Purity pulsed through my body like blood, and the remaining ember of poison bit back ineffectually. It burned still, and stubbornly rooted itself, but I eventually grew to…_tolerate_ it, for lack of a better explanation. I had no idea how much time had passed where I had effectively been pressing my _teeth_ to its neck in a battle for dominance before I felt it waver and give in, its tendrils curling in on itself like the last defensive fetal position of a spider before it dies.

And it was then that I finally opened my eyes.

* * *

Kikyo said the art of reiki healing was a gift. Not many priestesses had the knack for it. You either understood it, or you didn't. Kikyo knew the theory, of course, but her skills were more suited to explosive displays of power, destroying demonic energies utterly, rather than repelling them and reworking them to her benefit. Never mind demon pathogens and poison, but it appeared that I could also dispel common colds and other diseases, where in this day and age 'common' was a gross understatement to something that could very well be _fatal_. Knowledge of special healing herbs and poultices augmented this ability greatly, and Kikyo said that if I excelled at it, in time, I might be able to repair even the most grievous of wounds.

However, it seemed I still had a long way to go. Kikyo said a master at the craft could heal injuries and sickness with a single touch… I could barely close up a scrape if I concentrated, and it had taken me two weeks to wake, weak, and feeble after my little close encounter with the spider that could one day become Naraku.

"You are still learning," Kikyo said graciously, running gentle fingers through my unruly bangs to push them out of my face as I lay recovering in my sickbed. "But you will be strong. Many will one day have need of you. I can feel it in my bones." Her eyes shined then. "I am proud of you, little sister."

I felt shock on my face. Kikyo did not give praise easily. What's more, I felt undeserving of it. Turning my face away, I admitted, "There was no pride in my actions. If I had not rushed off by myself, I would not be in this situation." The disappointment I felt in myself for letting the wretched spider escape was crippling. I could have ended it all in one fell blow. Now…I had no idea what would happen in the future.

A ghost of a smile played at the corner of her lips, strikingly red against her clear, alabaster skin. "Yes…your recklessness is something we will need to work on. You were lucky this time." She moved the dark straight hair from my shoulder to expose the grotesquely marked skin hidden beneath it and pointed out, "You will have this scar for the rest of your days upon this earth. However…" Her eyes glinted. "Never again will you fall victim to this particular demon's poison. You endured bravely, and for that, you are rewarded with the strength you will need to continue towards your destiny. You will become a great healer, and bring prosperity to those around you."

It was the most esteem I had ever received at once from my distant elder sister, and my heart wanted to glow in the praise. Still, something niggled at the very edges of my thoughts until the realization finally emerged. Without thinking, I declared, "…But I don't _want_ to heal people. I want to be like _you_, Onee-sama."

Kikyo went very still, the shine in her eyes clouded over by something I couldn't quite identify. Finally, she told me quietly, "Some Taijiya arrived while you were recuperating… I have been entrusted with a terribly heavy burden." Her hands emerged from her sleeves to display a darkly glittering light fuchsia orb in her palms, around the size of a silver dollar coin. Recognition hit me like a crashing freight train.

"The _Shikon no Tama_…" I breathed out, scarcely daring to take another breath. The world was coming at me too fast.

Kikyo stared back at me very solemnly. "If you know what this is…then you know what it means for us." In her eyes, I could see her hardening herself. "We walk very different paths now, Kaede. It would greatly concern me if you were to become my shadow. Do not live in it, because walking in my footsteps will only bring you towards darkness…"

"But…" I grappled inwardly, searching frantically for a solution. Finally, I exclaimed, "The wish! You can make the wish, Onee-sama—tell it to disappear!"

She considered me thoughtfully for the longest of moments before nodding slowly, and, to my astonishment, holding it out to me. "Very well. You make the wish, little sister."

I froze, staring at the brightly luminescent, yet faintly sinister glow, and hesitated. I could end it all, right here and now. My hand reached out slowly to take it, but stopped, curling my fingers into a fist at the last moment, and looking away, shaking my head regretfully. "I cannot do as you ask, Onee-sama."

She tilted her head, though her face showed no emotion of surprise or reproach. She simply asked, "…Why?"

It was a long time before I could answer. Finally, I admitted, "My intentions are not wholly…pure. My wish would only succeed in corrupting the jewel even further with my selfish reasons behind it."

Her expression did not change. Its stiff, unchanging countenance brought me a terrible unease as she asked quietly, "…And what impure reasoning might you have?"

I didn't want to say it. I _couldn't_ say it. But as she continued to look at me with that face, the words came to my lips unbidden, along with tears, and a torrent of emotion that shocked me. "_I want to keep my sister_."

It's true that I couldn't care less about all the awful things the jewel would create if I could only keep her, the only light in the dark confusing place this world was to me. A thousand, no—_thousands_ could die, and I would keep smiling as long as I did not lose sight of that light as the chaos raged on around us. I _hated_ myself for it. It only made sense that she would hate me too. And yet…her arms were around me in a tight embrace and she said to me in her quiet voice that to others always seemed cold and lifeless, while to me it was always warm, "Then you know why _I_ cannot make the wish either… Do you understand now, little sister?"

Realization thrummed in my heart as her point was driven home. I could not make the wish…and she could not make the wish…for one integral reason.

We were _both_ selfish.

That night, my sister held me, and I saw her cry for the first time, her tears matching mine. Because from that time onward…we knew things would never be the same.

* * *

**So, I really shouldn't be writing this, but it's my first Inuyasha fic, and I really don't think I should put it in with my possible story ideas, because that collection is categorized under Naruto, and it would probably cause confusion. In any case, I update sporadically according to which story on my profile gets more reviews. **

**Encouragement and critique of any kind really helps, and I get lots of new ideas when people talk to me!**

**So please leave a review on your way out!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Tempting Fate — Part 2**

"Concentrate, Kaede. You must not lose focus," I heard Kikyo's voice in the background of my attention, soothingly centering my thoughts as I attempted to knit the boy's broken wrist back together. Reiki flooded the complex fractures of the misplaced bones and ligaments. It would've been a bad idea to try and put it back together again if one did not have knowledge of how the body was put together in the first place. Kikyo had warned me against it in the beginning, but it had prompted a rare shock from her when I clearly seemed to have a prodigious skill for the task.

I felt so guilty for the praise I received. I felt like I was cheating, stealing smiles from my sister for all the wrong reasons. After all, a Bachelor of Science degree kind of speaks for itself… And though the credentials didn't do me much good in this life, at least the practical application of biology still had its merits. In fact, I'd venture to say I probably knew more about human anatomy than anyone, let alone any twelve-year-old, in this era. And so I gently began to coax the boy's wrist parts back into place, the lull of Kikyo's soft, nightingale voice guiding my center.

All too soon however, she lapsed off into an abrupt silence, and even with my eyes closed, I could feel her tense up. Her normally calm, serene spiritual aura flashed dangerously, and though I could not feel the approaching threat—her sensory range was much more advanced—I knew something was coming. I abandoned my pursuits and turned my eyes to take in her serious expression inquisitively. "Onee-sama…?"

She stood gracefully, brushing off the front of her hakama in an almost nonchalant sort of way. I knew she only did it to distract me. But I'd sensed her initial reaction. Something big was coming. Still, she merely nodded to me civilly and said, "Complete your task. I will be back by the time you've finished to review the work you've done." And with that, she was gone as I watched the noren flap that served as a door to the small hovel sway shut behind her, the only thing that suggested she'd been there at all.

I stared after her for a good long moment in silence, ignoring the boy as he grumbled impatiently at the interruption. This was nothing new, unfortunately. In two years, Kikyo had been growing more and more distant—refusing to take me along whenever she sensed a threat to the village. We'd made the decision to stay in Edo, since staying on the move never helped us much before when our only problem was my uncontrollable spiritual energy. Now, one problem was replaced with an even bigger one, and constant travel would only serve to wear us down and dull our senses—or so Kikyo said.

"_Let them come_," _she dared them with unwavering steel in her voice, dark eyes flashing with a pure determination I'd never seen the likes of before. "We shall see who outlasts the other…"_

I couldn't even attempt to argue with her. Once Kikyo made up her mind about something, snow would fall in July before she changed it. Her appearance was of a demure young woman, and she never raised her voice, but I knew behind that exterior was the most bullheaded, tenaciously stubborn human being on the planet. She could be a monster to get along with sometimes. And she took herself _way_ too seriously, but that was just Kikyo. _My sister_. And I cared about her more than anyone else in the world.

Seeing her distance herself from me hurt worse than I could have ever imagined.

"Oi!" the boy squawked at me, indignant at being ignored for so long. "Are you going to fix my wrist, or not?!"

I turned my head slowly to scrutinize him with a faintly disgusted expression. I truly hated children, even if this one was around my age. Technically speaking, that is. "Have your mommy put a splint on it, Crybaby."

"But Kikyo-sama _told _you—"

"I know what she _told_ me, Dunderhead." I rolled my eyes. "But I'm the doctor. She's not. And I say miko healing is for special emergencies _only_. You're out of the woods now, so it should heal fine on its own. Give it a rest for a couple of weeks, and you'll have full function back. Now, leave me alone. I've got better things to do."

"Weeks?!" he exclaimed in dismay, then seemed to catch onto something I'd said. "But…you _could_ still heal it, couldn't you? Just this once?"

I considered him for a second with a shrug. "Sure." Then I grinned rather nastily. "I just don't want to."

The boy gaped at me like a fish as I proceeded to walk towards the door, then shouted at my back, "You're the worst miko _ever_!"

With that, I sent a very immature face at him over my shoulder involving a tongue and a pulled down eyelid, then skipped merrily out of the hut; sometimes, it was _incredibly_ liberating to act like a normal twelve-year-old. Anyhow, being the 'Worst Miko Ever' was sort of my trademark around here. While Kikyo wasn't exactly what you'd call a people person, everyone loved her anyway because of her kind, loving, and generous disposition. And then…there's me. Kikyo wasn't a people person, but I just genuinely didn't _like_ people. I had very few redeeming qualities, and I wasn't sure what it was, but I always saw the worst in others. If someone did something nice, I was always looking for ulterior motives. I guess you could say I had trust issues. It made my personality a little unpleasant for all but those who knew me very well (—which accounted for all of about one and a half people. And I say half, because I didn't trust Tsubaki as far as I could throw her. And that was a _fact_.)

It might've just been my rebellious stage, but I spent most of my time doing the exact _opposite_ of what my sister asked me to do in her absence. Another big part of it might have just been a cry for her attention…_any_ attention at all, outside of training, that is. It never worked, even though I kept trying. At best, I would receive that long, soulful stare that seemed to see right through me and pick me apart all at the same time. And sometimes…when I looked in her eyes, all I saw was a stranger. It was all because of the jewel.

I _hated_ it. I wanted to smash it into a million little pieces but everyone knows how much good _that_ would do. If Kikyo had grown this distant guarding _one_ Shikon Jewel…I shuddered to think of what would happen if someone pulled a Kagome… No, I stayed far, _far_ away from that thing. Not only did the sheer aura of power wafting off of it cause me to tremble in awe, but I got this…awful feeling. Something, like a voice in my head that didn't know how to shut up, _drew_ me towards it. I literally had to pinch myself to regain focus. And I knew the reason why, even if I didn't like to admit it… There was darkness in my heart. I knew because the darkness of the jewel responded to it, and disrupted Onee-sama's attempts to purify it.

In any case, destroying the thing that drew a wedge between my sister and I had become one of my running fantasies—along with finding that fucking spider and skewering it, but I'd seen hide nor hair of mini-naraku since the day it shoved its fangs into my neck. I couldn't say I was sorry for the fact, but it sure did make me nervous. Sometimes, when I was alone…I felt like something was watching me—that same crawling feeling I had gotten that fateful day on that field of death, only stronger. But it always eluded me. It was that same feeling I followed through the forest until I reached a hauntingly familiar clearing with a well.

The feeling lingered.

"Come out, Scum!" I cried out to the surroundings, cringing inwardly at how childishly high-pitched my voice was. I sounded like a little girl. Still, I continued to address my hidden foe with growing impatience with the situation, "Coward! I know you're there!" There was a whisper of laughter on the wind, and I knew it was playing with me. Clenching my fists, an intense wave of true humiliation and fury hit me like a tsunami. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened. "This is _stupid_! If you're not going to come out, just go _away_!" I stomped my foot on the ground in an expression anger and frustration, and in the instant I got to 'away', a shockwave of purity escaped my control, jetting out from me in a pulse that left the surrounding area slightly singed and smoking.

The ominous presence had fled in the aftermath, but that surprisingly wasn't what caught my attention. Reigning back control of my spiritual energy I sent a curious look around me. Curious, because when I sent out the pulse, something _else_ pulsed back. It was like an echo. Slowly, I approached the old Bone-Eater's Well with caution. I stopped at the edge, almost in a trance. Dreamlike, I reached out to brush my fingers along the coarse wooden frame, smoothed by time; it tingled with alien energy. And when I looked down into the abyss of darkness below, words could not describe how small and vulnerable I felt.

I had been a scientist once. I had believed there was no limit to what man could discover if one could only dream it. But that was a lifetime ago. And since then…I had learned that there are some things in life that are not _meant_ to be known, boarders that are not meant to be crossed, and rules that are not meant to be broken. Since then…I believe I had done _all three_ of those things not meant to be done. Somewhere, there is a line in the sand, and it separates the natural from the _un_natural… I didn't know where that line was anymore.

Somewhere beyond that endless darkness, beyond the bottom of the well, was a world that I could understand.

But I didn't belong there anymore.

* * *

I spent the rest of the afternoon in that glade. The villagers didn't go near the well unless it was to dispose of the remains of some youkai or other. Superstitious folks, but that suited me just fine. The adults treated me condescendingly when I was down in the village and their children were little beasts. Besides, I had a reputation of 'Worst Miko Ever' to upkeep, after all. Kikyo would find me when she got back, I was sure. But then an hour passed. And then another. And by that time I had long assuaged my curiosity of the well, probing it carefully with my power to receive its gentle answering call. The sun was just beginning to sink from its apex when hiding from the villagers got tedious and a horrible, niggling worry assaulted me like a wave of nausea.

She should have been _back_ already.

I hurried down the steep slope to the village swiftly, the loose, pleated material of my dark blue hakama batting wildly around my legs in my haste. There was a crowd in the village square and I weaved through the men with their hair styled in topknots, the women with their kerchiefs and screaming children strapped to their backs, and the elderly stooped over their walking sticks, with nimbleness none of the less well-traveled village dwellers could know. The town head stood addressing the small gathering, but I interrupted quickly with punitive eyes and as much of an authoritative voice as I could muster, "_Where_ is my sister?"

The weathered man let out a sigh at spotting the Worst Miko Ever, whose appearance usually heralded trouble of some kind not far behind. In this case, however, he actually seemed relieved to see me for once. "Good, you're here. We were just getting together some men to go search—"

I felt dread grip my insides as the implications began to fly at me from every direction. This…this could be bad. "No," I cut him off sharply, all business. I might have been the Worst Miko Ever, but I was a creature of logic, and far from an idiot. "If…if Onee-sama has not returned, we must assume the worst has occurred. Onee-sama is extraordinarily powerful, therefore logic dictates that only something equally extraordinary or greater in power could have prevented her from returning. In that case, taking a huge group to search for her would only lead to countless wasted lives. If it is indeed the worst case scenario, Onee-sama would not want us to suffer pointlessly for her sake…" I deliberated carefully as the village head measured me thoughtfully as if for the first time. Finally, I decided, "I will take a group of five, and no more. On one hand, it will sacrifice more ground, but on the other, our numbers will only take a loss of five, plus myself, should something nasty be waiting for us. Knowing you risk your lives, who will volunteer?"

My leaps of logic were not what one would call confidence inspiring, and this was one chief reason why Kaede the Worst Miko Ever was decidedly _not_ the village head. The man himself, Takero, seemed to rally the others' spirits, however, and three men stepped forward to the chopping block, hesitant to follow a 'child,' but with determined looks on their faces all the same. I nodded brusquely at each of them and unshouldered my bow intently, "We're _going_ to find her."

It seemed to put a brighter spin on things than '_Let's hope we can find what's left_'… And even though cold logic was my fallback for everything…I had to say that faith had its merits too. It gave me hope at least. And, for the first time in my occupation as a miko, and either of my lives, I _prayed_. I _really_ prayed—to all the gods, to all the spirts, and all the entities beyond my understanding—I prayed to find my sister alive, no matter what the cost. The gods could take whatever they wanted from me in return.

It rained that night.

"Spread out! Keep looking! If I could just…" I tried to concentrate, but the stinging sensation of the raindrops on my skin kept me trying not to shiver in the cold. I hadn't thought to bring a straw hat or poncho and the thick bangs that escaped my braid were drenched, clinging to my cheeks irritatingly. It distracted me from the task at hand and I was frustrated beyond belief. My sensing skills still weren't as good as they should have been—nowhere near Kikyo's level.

I needed to get _stronger_…

As my tired, weatherworn companions filed out, I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, finding my center. Painstakingly slow, I forced the spiritual energy out around me in awkward, groping tendrils. I felt the men first, each having taken off in a different direction to narrow down the search. They hadn't gone far, and, despite my outright shocking disregard for anyone's lives but mine and my sister's, I was glad they seemed unharmed. I was leading this mission. They were my responsibility. If I came back alone. . . . Suffice it to say I did not want to be the one responsible for notifying their friends and loved ones of my failure to protect them.

For just this one moment, I was not the Worst Miko Ever.

I was Kaede.

And I was good at killing things that liked to eat people.

After what seemed like hours, my eyes shot open as—not far to the east, maybe a league, if that—an explosive force erupted so violently, that any idiot with ears, let alone an inkling of spiritual sensing ability, would be able to detect it. I'd initially assumed it to be lightning striking down from the ominous clouds pelting down rain in all directions like a hail of bullets. But at the resonating shockwave that washed over me like a sonic boom…I knew then that if it _was_ indeed lightning, then I'd been woefully confused about something for a very long time… My name was _not_ Kaede, and I'd been reincarnated as Queen Victoria.

Considering the latter was ridiculously unlikely, I gripped my bow tighter and raced off, sprinting towards the source of the disturbance. There was no mistaking Kikyo's reiryoku. The reiki it was made up of was soothing and serene when at rest, but became sharp, cold, and deadly like a razor when it was employed in battle. But this time…I wasn't sure what to make of it. I'd never _felt_ Kikyo's reiryoku like this before… But I knew something was very wrong. Now that I'd got a lock on it, it seemed to be flickering _dangerously_ low.

Miko used the power from their spirit, their heart, their _soul_. That's why mental fortitude and discipline were so _fundamentally_ important to a miko's training. You must not have doubt, or hesitation. Your soul must remain strong, steady, because your soul is all that is standing between you, and death. It was essentially a _weapon_; a dampened soul, a depressed soul, a soul suffering from heart-break, or other worldly cares was a _blunt_ weapon. That is why miko seemed so ethereal and otherworldly to most others, because they separated themselves from those things which might burden their souls. For example: A miko did not involve themselves in affairs with lovers, because with all such affairs comes passion, and it is in the nature of passion, when unbridled, to burn _until there is nothing left_…

A miko's soul could not afford such passions.

Or so that is what I was taught. I still held a certain respect for Tsubaki because she taught me that each miko must make her own creed… I had begun to realize that mine was very different from Kikyo's.

But despite how different we were from each other, no matter how distant we became on our own paths in life, Kikyo would always be my sister. And I would be damned before I let anything happen to her. No one was allowed to touch her. And so when I sensed the _strangest_ reiryoku I'd ever encountered in the same clearing as my beloved sibling, I forced my legs to move even faster as I burst through the thick foliage to my quarry, skidding when I came to an abrupt halt in the putrid mixture of blood, mud, and various scattered youkai body parts.

There, standing somewhat braced at my sudden entrance over the still body of my sister stood a wild-looking, silver-headed figure with yellow eyes glowing out of the gloom cast by the dark clouds overhead. For what felt like the longest moment, we just stood there as the rain pelted down on us…staring. Then, quite suddenly, like a dam breaking…I let go of all the control I'd worked so hard to maintain, letting my reitsu flare explosively. My hair came undone from its loose braid and whipped around me, the mud, rain, and youkai remains close by _repelled_ from my person as if by reverse magnetism.

High spiritual pressure could _kill_ someone if concentrated enough. It's the reason Kikyo preached control to me in our daily meditations. Undirected, unchecked, without intent, there was a good chance my particular brand of reiatsu could cause a grown man—untrained in the spiritual arts—to faint. It drew youkai to me in my youth, when I had no semblance of control, a beacon to a pure, young maiden up for the taking. As I gained more of a grip, I could cause others to flinch and shiver at nothing if I wanted to. Now…I knew I was capable of much worse things if forced into anger, or shock.

I believe this was one of those times.

"Stay—_away_—from my—sister!" I had a hard time believing that the guttural, almost bestial snarl came from _me_. His oddly cat-like pupils dilated somewhat as my reiatsu pulsed threateningly, scorching some of the debris around my feet, the puddles sizzling as I adopted Tsubaki's tightrope walking prowl, holding my bow ready and knocking an arrow, cautiously circling.

Alarmed, the hanyou took a defensive stance and shouted, "Oi! I didn't do _nothin'_, Brat! I know how this looks, but I ain't a—"

"Stop _talking_," I growled lowly, trying to get a grip. His voice, his demeanor—it was all too surreal. "I want you to turn around…and keep walking."

His face contorted into a scowl. "Last time I checked…I don't take orders from fuckin' _pipsqueaks_ half my—"

"_Walk away, Inuyasha_!" I barked, my voice raw, my aura pulsing once again, and I drew my bowstring back threateningly, an uncharacteristic quiver in my arm. "Walk away, _never_ show your face to me again, or I _swear_ to you, you'll live to regret it…"

He _froze_ at the sound of his name, the ominous premonition, tense as piano string wires. His tone held a tinge of mild astonishment as he asked, "Who the _hell_ are you…?"

Clenching my jaw, I merely grated out rigidly in a voice trembling with turbulent mixed emotions, "Walk. _Away_." My eyes flashed in a warning. "Do _not_ come back."

"You _know_ me—" he started to take a step forward, but stopped, breaking off abruptly as a shiver overcame him and I watched, morbidly fascinated as a dramatic change overcame him. His hair changed from silver to black, starting at the roots and spreading down to the tips as if a black egg yolk had just been cracked over his head. Fluffy white ears regressed to human ones on the side of his head, and when he opened his eyes, they were devoid of any of the inhuman glow they once carried. He looked at me then, startled, evidently somewhat mortified, as if I'd just watched him do something horribly embarrassing—like undress. And again, there was a moment where we just stood, and stared at each other. I refused to look away, my face hard and grim, set in stone.

"Kikyo-sama!" distant voices could be heard calling. "Kaede-sama!"

It appeared the cavalry had arrived.

As the voices carried to meet his now human ears, Inuyasha clenched his fists, took one last look at me, and the fallen Kikyo…then turned and ran.

To this day, I still wonder how things would've turned out if I'd have shot that arrow through his back.

* * *

**So, this is shorter, but I feel that shorter chapters are better than no chapters.**

**Hope the introduction to our doggy-eared hero didn't disappoint. **

**And we get to see some new sides of Kaede, and how she's growing as well. (Hope it seemed real)**

**I'm curious to know what you think. Let me know, would'ja? Don't leave me hanging here.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Tempting Fate — Part 3**

Grass tickled the cracks in between my toes as I walked through the clearing, my steps making no noise, my movements devastatingly slow, and calculated. Before me was a lone doe, grazing in the meadow. It hadn't heard me until I had an arrow knocked and aimed directly at its eye. Neither of us moved after it raised its neck to fix its watery gaze on me, both stiller than the trees that grew tall around us. No wind blew, and so they did not sway. Even the rustling leaves seemed to go silent.

For a moment, I wondered what it was like to stand on the other side of my arrow, to stare down the iron-headed shaft towards the cool, focused face beyond the bow, and know that I held the power of life and death in my hands. The doe just stared. I entertained the possibility that maybe it knew its fate, and stood rooted to the spot in graceful acceptance… More likely it was just petrified. I honestly preferred the former speculation. Knowing my prey was terrified to die always made me uncomfortable, and made eradicating youkai rather difficult in some aspects.

If I was sent to exorcize a building of an 'unwanted tenant' most of the time it was just lower youkai—mischievous kitsune or tanuki; I often booted them out with merely a stern scolding. Most didn't mean much harm—'much' being the key word there. And even those who did, it wasn't really _their_ fault… Youkai were creatures of nature, like the deer, and _followed_ their nature. Going mad and killing them for slights like malicious pranks and things of that ilk would be like killing the deer for eating the grass. But as the philosophy of the four souls preached, things must be balanced to maintain a healthy peace… I was the one they called when things went wrong.

Moderation in all things…

I was about to let go of the bow string when a horrible feeling grated on my senses, followed by the telltale wail of one I'd become far too familiar with in the past few days—

"Aw, _hell_ no…" I cursed in a low, incredulous tone as the deer bolted, but miscalculated, and ended up running right _towards_ it. "You gotta be _kidding_ me right now…"

I watched, crestfallen, as the deceptively beautiful face of the centipede mistress morphed, practically split in two, with great, long fangs leering from her gaping maw as she attacked the spindle-legged creature with her _face_. Youkai or not, that couldn't be good for brain circulation. I observed as it played out, relieving the tension from my bow string until I just dropped my arms limply at my sides in pure disappointment, and it simmered for a moment before coming to a boil. Now I was _mad_.

"_Oi_! You _bitch_!" I cried across the clearing, swinging my arms emphatically. Her head snapped up unnaturally quick, blood from her quarry dripping sluggishly from the lower half of her face. "That was _mine_!"

As usual, the barely sentient twit proceeded to ignore the issue at hand, trample over the point, and arrive at a completely new one. "The younger miko… Kin of the jewel's protector…"

"Yeah, we've met, unfortunately. Glad you remember. I see you've managed to surpass a goldfish in terms of memory capacity. Impressive." I scowled. "Now, why don't you kindly _fuck off_ instead of stuffing your face with _my_ dinner?!"

The youkai woman cocked her head at a rather unnatural angle, as if attempting—_attempting_—to think. This kind of youkai was big, and relatively strong, but possessed very little intelligence beyond fulfilling the basic urges. That could change with time and experience, naturally, as tended to be the case with most youkai. Theoretically, one could start out as nothing but a few wisps of thought and emotion, lowly creatures, nothing but the base embodiment of that which created them. But these things learn and begin to process information, mimicking the world around them, and if they so desired, given enough power…even take on a human-like form. This one looked to be about halfway there at first glance, but upon closer inspection, and a little miko 'ex-ray-vision,' it clearly revealed something much more sinister… The human face it wore didn't actually _belong_ to it—merely the gristly upper half cruelly stolen from a beautiful woman.

How repulsive.

Face mirroring my disgust, I shook my head slowly. "You know what…never mind. You keep it. I think I'm gonna be sick…" While the original conception of demons is normally benign in nature, this is what happened when youkai took shortcuts—mindless monsters, whose only drive and purpose in life was to gain more power…with no care of who or what they stepped on to get it.

And then, I made a very stupid mistake.

Never turn your back on an enemy.

A screeching wail was the only warning I got before the thing lunged for me. "YOU WILL GIVE ME THE _SHKON NO TAMA_!"

It was only due to twelve years of ingrained reflexes and survival instincts in this war torn era that I managed to dodge before it grabbed me with any of its six arms, tucking my bow close to my body as I hit the ground, rolling back up into a defensive stance, ready for the next strike. The earth exploded where I had been standing less than a second ago, having been plowed into by the howling centipede demon, and I grimaced as flecks of the flying soil hit my face.

"Are you _stupid_!?" I shouted. Though it was a bit of a rhetorical question, so I moved on. "I don't have the jewel, you moron, my _sister_ does! And she's a lot less forgiving than I am! If you want to be smart for once, go somewhere far away where my sister's arrows can't reach you!"

"Lowly human! You presume to command _me_?!" The creature extracted itself from the mini crater it had created with its bulk, its tongue lolling from a gaping maw. "Once I have you as a hostage the shikon miko will have no choice but to hand over the jewel, and then I will devour you all!"

Scowling and holding my bow steadily before me, I retorted, "Any _real_ youkai would have no need of the jewel! Real strength is gained from experience, wisdom, and hard work! You're nothing but a mindless insect!"

It seemed to be the final straw, and the monster lunged itself at me with a howl of rage. It didn't seem to realize the key point of the term 'hostage' in which the victim must be kept _alive_. Then again, agitating the situation didn't exactly help my case… And trying to reason with this kind of youkai—or almost _any_ youkai at all—was pointless. Really, sometimes, I don't even know why I _try_…

I guess it's the thought that counts.

I braced myself with both hands on the haft of my bow held horizontally, acting as a barrier between me, and the centipede. My spiritual power formed a curved, translucent fuchsia wall between us, and I gritted my teeth as it collided, flinching each time it threw itself mindlessly at the shimmering barricade. I cursed once again the nature of my spiritual powers. They were much more attuned towards nurturing than towards causing harm—very unconfrontational. That's why I tried to compromise and reason my way out of most situations. Some youkai actually listened. Some owed me favors. Some actually became allies—even _friends_, you could say, at a stretch. Well…more so than anyone I knew in the village, at any rate.

Suffice to say, Mistress Centipede and I would _not_ be becoming friends at any point in the near future.

Unfortunately, the only barrier I knew how to create was channeled through my bow—more instinct than anything else—and such a thing was only meant to be used as a temporary shield at best. It wasn't going to last, I knew, and was a constant drain on my reiki, the surface area shrinking until it was about the size of a common broadshield, and each time the creature slammed into me I had to dig my feet into the ground to compensate. I could feel the exact moment coming when the barrier would break, and, woefully…my bow fractured and disintegrated into a blast of splinters when it did.

No time to mourn, I gathered the remnants of my reiki and channeled them into the tendons and muscles of my legs. This was something I knew even Kikyo couldn't do. Where she excelled at directing her deadly reiki offensively into her surroundings, mine was perfectly comfortable staying right where it belonged. The _body_ was my area expertise, and, as I had recently discovered, my reiki could…_enhance_ certain things greatly. This included running and jumping of course, but this was scratching the surface. Of that, I had no doubt. But the best part? As long as it stayed within the body, the energy did not dissipate—not exactly—as long as the vessel remained undamaged.

But I had no time to congratulate myself. I'd barely had time to focus my reiki into my legs and jump out of the way before the enraged youkai took off my head. My bow was history. I'd put down my slingshot several months ago in favor of a miko's professional tools of trade, and boy, was I kicking myself now for not thinking ahead. Stupid Kaede, stupid, _stupid_—

Damn it! That was close!

This was the kind of situation one might generally label as '_NOT-FUCKING-GOOD_.' Or screwed. Yes, I was screwed. I was so _horrifically_ screwed at this point it wasn't even funny. Well, Inuyasha was laughing, but he's a freak of nature—literally—with a twisted sense of humor, and a rather nasty penchant for enjoying my suffering, so it doesn't count.

"Would you shut the hell up?!" I cursed at him heartily as I propelled myself up into the tree next to him in order to avoid another blow from the centipede beast. "I'm _trying_ to concentrate!"

"Running from weaklings again, eh? Kaede-gaki?" He let out a guffaw at my expression as I hugged the tree trunk suddenly to keep my balance. Apparently the stupid creature was determined to uproot the entire forest to get to me. "Didn't think ya needed to concentrate to kill some stupid lower youkai like that thing. Kikyo could probably—Oi! Watch it, Brat!"

I tossed a pinecone up and down in my hand with a menacing glare, reiki tingling at my fingertips threateningly. "One more word, and I'll shove the next one down your pants and tell Onee-sama you tried to…"

"Now that's just uncalled for—HEY!"

"Get out of the way!" I hollered as, on the spur of the moment, I flung the spiritually charged pinecone at the hissing centipede as it reared up behind him, spiraling around the copse of trees, and constricting them with her massive girth. And really…all I could think was that I had been reduced to _pinecones_. But hey, if it's stupid and it works…

My lips curled slowly as I watched the trajectory of the ammunition curve through the air as if in slow motion until they stretched themselves into a rather unpleasant grin when I gave my reiki a sharp pulse. "…_Katsu_."

The creature let out a howl of agony at the resulting explosion, and—damn it all if Inuyasha was just gaping at the aftermath. I barely managed to snag his collar and drag him back with me to escape the blast of fanning pine-kernels/shrapnel that still burned with purifying energy. I wasn't great with things that weren't inside the body. But a vessel, i.e. pinecone or other small, projectile objects? Well…I was sure good at blowing those things to kingdom come—which, of course, seemed to be as good a reason as any for Kikyo to forbid me to practice with sacred arrows anywhere near the village…and that's all I've got to say about that.

I braced my knees for impact as the ground came racing up to meet me, gritting my teeth and cursing as the hanyou and I ended up landing in a bit of a heap. Shoving away from him callously without waiting for the typical response to proximity, I took off at a sprint, gathering cast-off pinecones as I drew my momentum almost parallel with the ground since that seemed like a good idea. I could already hear the enraged shrieking behind me and the crashing as whole trees were ripped up from their roots. And I had no idea what the hell happened to Inuyasha.

Eh. Oh well. Not my problem.

So, I had a plan, roughly…sort of…kind of.

I knew the area better than the stupid centipede at least, and strategy was key here. I sucked in a breath of air, then deliberately changed direction with a determined smirk. So maybe this strategy was a little untoward, and would probably get me yelled at later—but at least there would _be_ a later. I really needed to learn to stop insulting things that could eat me; that was the moral of this story, I was _sure_ of it. But I was never the best listener…

"Fuck you, Bitch!" I hollered over my shoulder. "Why don't you go screw yourself a helmet beetle!? It'd sure as hell make you a lot _happier_!"

A spike of youki and an unintelligible roar of fury was the only response. Then again, that was kind of what I was going for. Helmet beetle youkai were rather notorious for undisputedly being the butt ugliest creatures ever to crawl out of that nebulous pit in which all youkai are begotten—even by centipede youkai standards, apparently—though, surprisingly virile lovers as rumor would have it…

Everything was going my way. All I needed to do was heard the giant idiot a little more to the east, and I could cash in one of my favors—though I was a little reluctant to do so, tell ya the truth. I wasn't so keen on giving up this 'friend' of mine just quite yet, nor was I very inclined to intrude with trouble on their doorstep. Not only was it just plain rude to lead a giant centipede demon to your neighbors' house, but…I actually kind of cared. Shocking. I know.

But desperate times call for desperate measures.

I threw some more taunts over my shoulder, still herding the stupid beast towards my unwitting allies—whom would be more than happy to put an end to the miserable dolt faster than you can say lickety-split. But then I remembered that none of my plans seemed to go off without a hitch, or at least some sort of bump in the road, and, more often than not, tended to explode in my _face_, such as most things I handled or happened to spend any small amount of time around, like fragile vases, or priceless heirlooms…or pinecones for that matter. What's more, looking back over my shoulder at the thing I was running from, I couldn't help thinking to myself…really? This is what I've been reduced to? Running from a weak-ass centipede monster? What exactly did that say about me? And at this rate, how the heck was I supposed to stand a chance in _hell_ with what the future held in store?

All it took was one moment of doubt, and my reiki sputtered and died, slipping beyond my reach.

See? This is exactly what I'm talking about.

"Arragh!" I felt my ankle hook around a protruding tree root. It was obvious what would happen before it even took place, and all I could do was squint my eyes shut and brace myself for impact as I went flying through the air, the force from my previous momentum turning on me like a fickle companion. And when I hit the ground, I hit it _hard_, skidding out into another grassy clearing on my _face_. Reiki enhanced speed, I learned, is _not_ something to be fucked with—especially if you're accident prone…or being chased by a giant centipede bitch, besides.

Speaking of which, in three…two…one…

"DAMNABLE HUMAN CURR!" Prior mentioned bitch crashed into the clearing in a tangible rage, her limbs flailing about wildly as she propelled herself forward by grabbing whatever she could and destroying everything in-between her and _me_. "I WILL HAVE THE JEWEL!"

For a moment there, as I lifted my bruised and dirtied face from the ground to scowl contemptibly at the swiftly encroaching enemy…I really thought it was the end for me. The air in my lungs felt strange, as if it were about to burst—but then I realized it was because I couldn't _breathe_, and my heart felt like it was about to beat out of my chest. But not for long. It all happened too fast for that. One minute, the youkai was coming too quickly, and then suddenly, from out of nowhere comes this…this _blur_ of red and white, and a flash of claws, a spray of black, reeking ichor…and, just like that, it was over. So fast, I didn't even realize the reason I couldn't breathe was because I had been _holding my breath the entire time_.

I tried not to make my greedy partaking of glorious, life-giving oxygen too obvious, given present undesirable company…

"Feh! What a loser. Like hell I'd let a fuckin' bitch like that get 'er mitts on the jewel… Oi, Kaede-gaki," The self-righteous bastard had the nerve to grin at me, and cupped both clawed hands around his pointy ears cheekily, "did I hear a 'Thank you, Inuyasha-sama'? 'You're my hero, Inuyasha-sama'?" And it got worse. Believe me.

And, unlike usual, where I could just ignore it, and walk away…this time…I was _pissed off_. And, as I staggered unsteadily to my feet, a sharp pain lancing its way through my ankle, my hands balled into fists that had my blunt nails digging sharp half-moon cuts into my palms, I gritted my teeth and sent him a dark black stare that only grew blacker as he kept talking. The only thing I really wanted at that point in time was for something to shut him up, be it the earth opening up and swallowing him, or a meteor coming down and nailing him in the head. I had worse, and far more hanyou-cidal thoughts flit through my mind's eye before I grated out, "How about you go burn in hell, ya smelly, flee-bitten Bastard?"

Really, it wasn't anything personal. Neither was the first time I contemplated putting an arrow in his back. I just wanted him _gone_. Again, it wasn't personal. Under any other circumstances, I had a feeling we might even get along famously. After all, he was the one I learned all my favorite curse words from. (Much to Kikyo's chagrin). We shared several things in common, such as a blatant disregard for authority figures, and a knack for getting into trouble. And, (though he'd probably never admit it out loud), we both loved my sister dearly.

It was this last bit that caused problems.

I knew there was a reason I was a cat person. I loved cats; For the most part, they're cute, fluffy, quiet, independent, and require little maintenance. Dogs, on the other hand, _stink_, and often have the tendency to drool all over the place. They also bark and make noise, and often develop unhealthy codependence and separation anxiety issues. If I was a cat, Inuyasha was _definitely_ a dog—which makes perfect sense, considering what kind of demon he was sired by. Doesn't exactly explain _Sesshomaru_, but I really, _really_ don't want to be opening up that can of worms. Not now. Not _ever_, preferably. But I digress.

It takes a certain mindset, really. You have to have a lot of patience, which—lord knows—Kikyo had in _spades_. And so did I—honest! Unless Inuyasha happened to be involved. At which point, it was a wonder we didn't try and kill each other. And, in hindsight, I could truthfully say I wasn't the slightest bit surprised at the way things turned out the way they did. I mean, _really_, what the hell was I expecting? This _is_ Inuyasha we're talking about here.

'_Walk_ _away_.' HA. It's actually kind of adorable that I expected my warnings to make an impact. If anything, that just made it ten times worse. Since when, in the grand history of _ever_, has Inuyasha listened to a damned thing anyone tells him to do? In the end, I think he did it to spite me. Because it sure as hell wasn't the jewel, or the hot big sister that kept him on my tail to begin with—those were just the side benefits that were now becoming a major pain in my ass.

I believe I had made a few cardinal mistakes during our first meeting that might have royally screwed me over. One, I'd displayed an unusually high amount of power, and probably spooked him—which was rather hard to do, considering who we're talking about here—again, even if he would never admit it. Now he acted like he had something to prove; two, I'd told him _not_ to do something, which was pretty much shooting myself in the foot, because what does he do? Goes and does it anyway, the vindictive bastard; three, in my emotional turmoil, I'd gone and blurted out his damn _name_ like an idiot. Now he's under the impression that I know something—which I _do_, but it'd have to be a cold day in hell before I'd tell him a damn thing; four, and perhaps the worst sin yet…I had inadvertently discovered one of his deepest darkest secrets…

A hanyou's night of weakness was not something one wanted spread around, after all.

Suffice to say, it was a rather delicate situation all in all…and all it had taken was one measly conversation.

I should have just put an arrow in his liver. That would have solved all my problems.

And now they just seem to keep getting worse.

"I had everything under control!" I burst out furiously before he could retort, swinging my arms emphatically in my very real rage. "I had a plan! It was _working_, and then you jump in and ruin _everything_!" I was starting to get the feeling I wasn't just talking about the stupid centipede. "You're the _worst_! I _hate_ you!"

"Hey, you Brat!" He walked up and grabbed my shirt, shouting into my face. "I just saved your life, so stop throwin' a hissy fit, and just be grateful I didn't leave you to get turned into centipede crap!"

The volume at which he retaliated, and the fact that he had me lifted about an inch off the ground brought a bit of clarity to my enraged frustration, and, with practiced effort, I willed my expression into one of neutral tranquility. Voice resigned, I mumbled a not-so-sincere-sounding, "I'm sorry…"

He glared at me for a moment longer before relinquishing his hold on the front of my shirt and dropping me. "Keh… I don't want to hear 'I'm sorry,' I wanna hear a goddamn 'thank you.'"

I wanted nothing more than to extract myself from the situation, since I could only handle Inuyasha in certain doses; it was like staring at the sun for too long. And like hell was I going to thank him for being a perpetual wildcard in my careful plans for the future. I was struck by a moment of vindictive inspiration, however, when my eyes landed upon his shifty set of ears. Fighting to keep the spiteful smirk off my face, I said, "Alright, alright. But only if…" I deliberately checked the surroundings as if for watchers, and his own eyes darted around warily as if searching for the would-be attackers before coming back to me suspiciously. I feigned embarrassment and put a finger to my lips, and then he seemed to get the picture.

Smirking, he crouched down in front of me, yellow eyes glinting with amusement. "Heh. Fine, I'll listen. Say it quick if you don't want anything else to hear."

For a second, looking at his roguishly handsome face as he humored me with that crooked smile of his, my heart did a little stutter in my chest, and I almost felt bad for what I was about to do… Almost. And so I took a step closer, holding my hands to my chest in a show of girlish shyness and a contrite pout adorning my lips, then leaned forward as if to whisper in his ear…only to suck in a deep breath and let out a the loudest, coldest, high-pitched scream I'd ever produced. And if _my_ ears were ringing…

I took off while he was still flailing on the ground with an impish grin on my face.

Ah, childhood.

* * *

Kogitsunemaru—Kogi for short—was a kitsune from a moderately sized clan I'd evicted from a residence in a town nearby. They had lots of babies though, so I felt really bad afterwards… Territorial disputes had driven them out of their homeland—which tended to happen a lot with youkai, actually—and so they'd been forced to relocate nearer to humans. And you know how kitsune can get a little loopy around humans… Just can't help themselves, the poor tricky bastards.

Anyway, I felt bad. Really bad. Like, really, _really_ bad. And I figured, '_Hey, there must be _something_I can do for you guys_…' and ended up taking them home with me. Okay, not _really_…but close enough. The kitsune clan was now settled in the woods not far from Edo in what could one day—hopefully _never_—be called Inuyasha's Forest. Until then, everyone just called it Royaken's Forest, and it was _he_ whom I consulted with upon begging quarter for the wayward clan.

Royaken was one of those really old youkai—old enough to know the Inu no Taisho!—who you could never actually tell the real age of, and, to be honest, a really nice guy. I didn't know why he had such trouble with humans. I guess maybe because his bestial appearance caused some alarm, but _really_? How could you hate someone like Royaken? He was like a giant wolf-spitting teddybear for the love of… Anyway, getting off topic.

So Royaken owed me a favor, being an impartial mediator between demons and humans when it came to the wanton destruction of his home and whatnot, and so happily welcomed Kogi and the rest of kitsune clan into the forest with open arms. Really, the guy was such a doormat sometimes, I think he probably would have let the kitsune in even if he didn't owe me a favor in the first place. In any case, I'd led them to water, so to speak…then again, even if Royaken guarded the forest from those who would damage it, he held no sway over what went on between the denizens that made their homes within.

Something I'd learned about youkai was that they were a little like koi fish trapped in a tiny pond over an extended period of time with no food…at which point they begin to eat each other—cannibalistic, in other words. The big fish eats the little fish; a brutal yet simple concept. And, looking at Kogi's clan—weakened, generally defenseless, with no roof over their heads, in a forest _full_ of bigger fish, with all those little baby kitsune… Yeah, even _I_ wasn't that heartless.

So, naturally, I got to work.

I swiped a couple of tools from Edo including some hammers, nails, and something like a hacksaw. When I was little, on my tenth birthday—the first one, anyway—my father decided to help me build me a treehouse. He constructed it all the way in the tallest bows of a huge, twisted camphor tree that I'd always been determined to try and conquer. Key word there, 'try;' most of the time I just fell out of it and broke various limbs. But I remained determined, much to my poor father's chagrin. And, since I was probably the most stubborn child ever to exist, instead of forbidding me from climbing the tree in the first place like any sane parent, he installed a _ladder_, expediting the process, along with various other platforms and thrown together planks of wood where I could crow my victory to the heavens and pretend to be queen of the world.

I loved him for that, along with teaching me that not every question has a single answer—to think outside the box, to _defy_ the expectations of others. And I remembered that…even if I no longer remembered his face.

In any case, the kitsune certainly appreciated it. Their homes were situated high in the tree tops, connected by crisscrossing plank bridges and ladders so saturated with my rather toxic reiki 'scent' that any who weren't accustomed to it—particularly those of a youkai persuasion—steered far clear of it out of pure self-preservation instinct. It didn't seem to bother the kitsune though. In fact, on this point, I was in for a bit of a crash course in youkai culture.

You see, 'appreciation' and 'gratitude' didn't exactly cover it anymore. Youkai weren't exactly kind to one another, if you catch my drift—not often at least. It was a dog-eat-dog-eat-everybody-else kind of world for them. And when there was that uncommon powerful youkai out there with an ounce of compassion for their fellows and underlings, well, the rest were just blown away. Sure, it inspires loyalty and admiration along with hate and contempt, but for youkai, it's much more than all that.

As for me, I could have just booted the kitsune out of the village headman's shiro and been done with it. I could have purified every last one of them, because I am a priestess and apparently that's just what we do. I could have left them abandoned and homeless, but no. No, I led them to a place where youkai can live without having to worry about humans. Even then, I could have just left it at that, and been done with it. They wouldn't have blamed me, even if they were completely defenseless in a dog-eat-dog-eat-everybody-else kind of world, but no. I went above and beyond, even going so far as to _provide_ for them for _nothing_ in return.

That's the kind of thing that makes youkai do something weird.

When Kogi's father, Tsuchimaru, leader of the once proud kitsune clan, knelt before me and addressed me as 'My Lady Miko' I knew something had gone a little wonky. It was Kogi who explained the technical bits to me since I had absolutely no idea how the hell I was supposed to respond to that.

"Okay, so, you've heard about the Great Dog General, right?" he asked after pulling me aside. We sat side-by-side on a secluded branch, our legs swinging aimlessly below, and he grinned at me cheekily from beneath tufted bangs, a deceptively small but sharp fang poking out over his lower lip in a way that drew my eyes to it unconsciously. He had tilty, narrowed eyes winged with red and black markings beneath, stretching past the outer corners, giving them an oddly appealing definition. They always seemed to be half closed in mirth of some kind or other, though I could tell when the sun glinted off them that they were hued a deep crimson red that seemed to be a trait within the clan along with similar colored hair and furs.

Earth kitsune, the _Yako_, were a little different from their green eyed, auburn haired Celestial cousins, the _Zenko_—calmer in temperament, but far more aggressive in their instincts; less skilled in magic, but unquestionably superior in physical strength and youki capacity; while the Celestials were longer lived and could become extremely potent in their prime (at around nine or ten hundred years), Earth Kitsune had a steeper power curve and reached full maturity at around five hundred—reproduced faster too if all the babies in the clan had anything to do with it.

"Inu no Taisho…" I hummed with a nod. "An interesting bedtime story—sure to give all the kiddies nightmares—but I still don't follow. What does a great and terrible dead guy have to do with your dad groveling at my feet?"

"Well, back in the good old days, my dad used to serve under him when he was just a kit." Kogi shrugged a bit at my dubious look. But…judging by Tsuchimaru's fairly advanced age, I guess I could believe it. "Everyone always tells the stories," Kogi continued, "but what they _don't_ know is how the stories _started_. That overgrown fleabag wasn't always a great and terrible lord, ya know? Didn't even wanna be. People just started following him, built up a palace around him, and started calling him 'Lord of the Western Lands.'" He shrugged again. "The reaction was kinda hilarious after all was said and done, 'least according to what Dad says."

I blinked, and could suppress an insatiable, almost _perverse_ curiosity when it threatened to overcome me. "…What'd he do?"

Kogi snorted. "Dad says he stared at the place like he thought it would _eat_ him. Then he promptly installed his pregnant mate in the throne room and never set foot there again. His Lady called all the shots from day one, and seemed quite happy to continue doing so, even after he kicked it with some human wench."

I tilted my head slightly and narrowed my eyes at him with a frown calculated to mask mild indignity. "…You got a problem with human wenches, Kogi-kun?" I tensed slightly. Depending on his answer, I was ready to kick him out of the tree towards the unforgiving forest floor below and be done with it. Youkai were infuriatingly confusing sometimes—customs, instincts be damned.

"Hmm…?" He leaned forward slightly as if to get a better view of my face. He was entirely too close, but I held my ground. I never backed down. It wasn't in my nature. And by the probing feeling of his youki, I got the feeling he was _challenging_ me. I didn't know what that meant to youkai, but to me…it actually kind of pissed me off. My frown pulled back slightly over my teeth in a light snarl that came out more as a hiss, my reiki lashing out sharply. A warning.

To his credit, Kogi didn't flinch. Instead, his lips stretched slowly, the corners pulling up almost to his sharply pointed ears in mirth, vermilion eyes widening slightly, sparkling with dark mischief. "Quite the contrary… Though I can't say comely village girls, or beautiful princesses quite suit my tastes." Then he looked me right in the eye and licked his lips. My heart gave a little stutter, though I couldn't tell if it was due to fear, disgust, or…something else entirely. Feeling oddly flattered, my first impulse was to flush vividly.

I had a mind to ask what exactly those 'tastes' _were_, but then I remembered that I was supposed to be _twelve_, and even though Kogi _looked_ like he was twelve, he was most decidedly _not_ twelve…and it was all so fucked up. Sighing in an odd mixture of disappointment and self-disgust I shook my head at his antics. "Though this is _truly_ an intriguing conversation, I'm still confused about what it has to do with Inu no Taisho and your dad bowing at my feet."

"It has everything to do with it," he said, grinning, the mid afternoon sun glinting off a tantalizing overlapping fang. Again, he was entirely too close. "You're special, Kaede-chan."

Unbidden, a snort almost sent me reeling backwards with self-depreciative mirth. "Ha! You got that right. Though I'm pretty sure it's not the kind of 'special' _you're_ thinking of."

He tilted his head, the smile still in place as he watched me through half-lidded eyes. He waited for the laughter to pass before he pointed out, "Your actions draw others to you. There are many who are in your debt."

I shrugged a bit uncomfortably, looking away from him as my spirits dampened somewhat. "Sort of comes with the job description…"

He blinked languidly and stared at me for a long moment before he replied drolly, "…No, Miko. It does not."

I frowned, and conceded the point, "Okay, so most miko shoot first and ask questions later, but—"

"—you are not 'most miko,'" he interceded, his lips forming a crooked smirk.

I pinned him with a deadpan stare. "…Again. What does this have to do with anything?"

"The Dog General was one of the first of his kind. Like you, his deeds—great and terrible—drew others to him. Then, also like you, there was a miko. Hmm…what was her name?" He tapped his pointed chin with a clawed digit thoughtfully. "Ah, yes. Midorika, Midori—something or other. She was the same. _You_ are the same."

I got the strange urge to laugh hysterically. "You're yanking my chain. Cut the kitsune crap for a second, Kogi, come on now—"

His eyes flashed for a second in thinly veiled irritation, then he leaned in close, and spoke very softly, "Open your ears, and _listen_ to what I am telling you, Little Girl…" And, strangely enough, with those few words, he managed to reduce me to feeling like just that—a silly little girl. He reached forward, snagging a lock of mid-length, obsidian hair between two fingers, sniffing at it curiously, as if an afterthought. Tugging and twirling it in a deceptively gentle manner he whispered, sinisterly sweet, in my ear, "One day…when you are a little girl no longer, you will become ridiculously powerful. It is in your nature. Like the General. Like the Priestess. I can _smell_ it on you…" I swallowed thickly as I felt his straight nose against my cheek, listening to him inhale deeply, sending shivers racing up and down my spine. I still hadn't worked up the inclination to push him off the branch just yet… His breath felt like velvet against my skin as he continued to speak in deceptively soft dulcet tones. "You led me and mine to this place and built a home where we may become strong once more, embraced within the power of the earth again. I will become stronger too, and when I gather all the clans beneath me…I will make you _mine_."

My heart leapt erratically in my chest, and if the telltale curve of his lips against my skin was any indicator, it meant _he_ could hear it too. I still hadn't pushed him out of the tree yet. And while my feminine pride rebelled against such ludicrous, presumptuous claims…it was an alarmingly small part of me that did so. Worrying my lower lip, I idly fiddled with a bag of spell beads in an embroidered drawstring bag I always kept around my neck since Tsubaki gave them to me. Deep, dark, calculating thoughts plagued me as I contemplated the near future…the far distant future…the long years in between. The nefariously attractive kitsune currently nosing my ear wasn't good for narrowing down my mental list of pros and cons.

It was an odd moment of clarity when one of those decadent fangs grazed my earlobe and my thought process halted entirely. The words came unbidden through numbed lips. "Okay."

He paused abruptly in his highly inappropriate perusal of my person, drawing back to stare at me curiously through attentive rosy hues. He cocked his head. "…'Okay'? That's it?" He almost seemed disappointed. "I would have expected you to have put up more of a fight than _that_…"

"Yeah. Me too, actually." I shrugged, still somewhat numb, yet the tingling feeling of apprehension—or was it anticipation?—was beginning to seep into my veins. I felt a slow—_rare_—smile curving my lips, despite myself. "But then…I guess I wouldn't really mind all too much if it's you. You're not so bad. And I like you."

For the first time since I'd met him, a look of pure shock flitted over his habitually amused features. Then it was gone, replaced with a pale blush as he turned his face away from me sharply, mumbling, "…You're entirely too innocent. _And_ you're human. You don't even understand what you're agreeing to, do you?"

My smile slowly morphed into a sultry smirk and I reached out slowly to turn his face back towards mine, eying his pouting frown intently. "I might be human…but I like to consider myself pretty quick on the uptake." At that, I moved in decisively and nibbled experimentally on that protruding lower lip, effectively shocking the hell out of him in the process. I smiled against his lips as I felt his muscles tense, and relax, then tense again, as if he wasn't entirely sure whether to reciprocate or not. In the end, I didn't give him the chance, drawing back smoothly and moving in to whisper in his elfin ear, "I'd say at this point, age, species, orientation…it's all pretty much relative. And for the record…I'm only 'innocent' on a technicality." Boldly, I ran my tongue along the edge, up to the exotic point of his ear. Just to see what would happen.

"…Huh." His voice sounded as if it had jumped up about four octaves. "Imagine that."

"Imagine that…" I repeated smugly…then proceeded to slowly push him off the branch with my pointer finger. I wondered if this constituted as the youkai version of 'I promised to marry you when we were kids.'

So far, I liked it.

* * *

**Okay, so I've got a lot of insecurities about this chapter, but I knew that if I kept agonizing over it, I'd never get anything published, and the story would never progress. Gotta keep it moving.**

**Kogitsunemaru turned out a lot different than I thought he would. But It's the same with all my OCs really. They have a mind of their own. But really? I was kind of using Koga as my base model here. How the hell did this even happen? Then again, I can't exactly say I'm disappointed with the outcome either...hehe ^w^ Hope you all like him, 'cause he ends up being kinda important in the long run!**

**We also see the issues with Kaede and Inuyasha. (We'll see more of this next chapter). I don't really know who I feel more sorry for. Kaede, Inuyasha, or Kikyo, for having to deal with BOTH of them.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Tempting Fate — Part 4**

"Something I will never understand for the life of me," Kogi said in an offhand sort of way as he critically examined my cuticles, "is why on _earth_ humans are born with such useless claws…"

I shrugged neutrally, looking out over the placid forest lake with an unconcerned air. "Why are foxes born with tails? There is no 'why.' They just are."

"Hmm…?" he hummed, still concentrating on the blunt nails as he toyed with my fingers. He seemed to be dissatisfied with my answer, but did not continue to pursue it. Instead, he experimentally bent and tested the ductility of several of my overgrown fingernails. Kogi was nothing if not insatiably inquisitive. "Why are some longer than the others?"

I shrugged again. "Human claws are weak and break easily. But they're constantly growing, so that makes up for the loss… Not all of them grow at the same rate—like hair. They're actually made out of the same stuff. Just modified skin. It's a pretty slow going regeneration process though, compared to other parts of the human body."

Intrigued, he looked up at my face and cocked his head. "What's the fastest, I wonder…?" Smirking, I then proceeded to stick my tongue out at him and pointed at it. The action spoke for itself. He grinned that wide, earsplitting grin, then quickly darted forward to snap at it playfully. I fell backwards in order to evade him, laughing brightly as my back hit the sandy shore of the lake when he took advantage of my loss of balance and pinned me down. I regarded the mischief dancing in his eyes with a weary reprimand in mine. Unlike Zenko kitsune, Yako kitsune took the idea of a practical joke and ran for miles with it. They had the rather nasty propensity for taking things too far…

Still, I found myself enjoying the time I spent with Kogi more and more… He knew next to diddly-squat about humans, but seemed more than willing to learn. 'So that I can take care of you properly,' he insisted. He could be so sweet sometimes that I found myself oddly hesitant to explain that humans did not share the same lifespan as youkai—that when I 'grew up,' he would still be the same as he was now. I felt myself fingering Tsubaki's spell beads more and more as I began to second guess my less than pure intentions regarding the exuberant kitsune. Because when it all came down to it…he was merely a means to an end.

Getting attached was a mistake.

"I have an idea," he said suddenly, breaking my train of thought as he crossed his arms over my chest, setting his head on top of them to stare at me expectantly.

"Oh?" I blinked, pushing any feelings of guilt to the sidelines for further brooding upon later. "This should be good."

He tugged at one of my hands, subjecting the brittle appendages once again to his careful inspection, testing the pliantness of which with careful teeth, making my cheeks go a bit pink despite myself. Then he 'hmm…'d, and fixed me with a look. "If all goes well, I'll let you know in a couple of days."

And with that, without even a by-your-leave, he was gone in a swirl of leaves, leaving me alone by the lakeside shore.

For a while, I just lay there, staring at the clouds in the blue sky peeking through the parting in the branches overhead, and let out a long sigh at the strange ache left behind in my chest. I was becoming entirely too accustomed to his presence. I actually _missed_ him when he was gone. The attraction came on hard and fast, and I could no longer play it off as a simple fixation easily forgotten with the passage of time. Frowning, I extracted the loop of sinister bespelled beads from the pouch Tsubaki gave me and ran them between my fingers meditatively, which had become a bit of a habit lately.

Was I really so far gone that I would condemn the life of another to prolong my own?

Feeling eyes on me—or a _singular_ eye, rather—I turned my head slowly to peer out at the murky lake Kogi and I ended up frequenting so often. Narrowing my own eyes at the suspiciously amphibious ocular appendage sticking out of the still water staring at me curiously, I bit out rather unpleasantly, "What are _you_ looking at?"

As if bitten by the scorn in my tone, the eye winced then darted back into the water with a splash. Letting out a bit of a snort, I scowled and sat up with a grunt, turning reluctantly back in direction of the village. Looking back, it was an amazing contrast, how much more time I spent in the forest now than in the tiny bundle of huts that served as the fledgling town of Edo. These trees surrounding me felt much more like home in comparison, despite the many dangers within.

But then, ultimately, wherever Kikyo went, I followed. Even if she was much less inclined these days on allowing me to do so… In fact, she was much more likely to allow the company of _Inuyasha_ as aid when she left to purify one demon or another in pursuit of the jewel; that rankled just a bit… The half-demon still liked to pretend that he only stuck around for the jewel, but we all knew the truth. If not for the lone fact that I _knew_ he hadn't even been aware the jewel's existence when he first started tailing us, then there was the unbridled devotion he demonstrated in protecting Kikyo—even when she didn't need him to—that spoke for itself.

Despite my best efforts at reverse-parent-trapping them—even going so far as to beg some rather nasty kitsune pranks off Kogi—the two of them had formed a bond. That was weird for Kikyo. Even weirder that Inuyasha was a _hanyo_, and Kikyo was rather strongly against those kinds of relationships as a matter of principle if nothing else. While the logical part of me rebelled that there was something wrong not on just a hypocritical level here, and that allowing the bond to solidify was a mistake in regards to my careful planning, the side of me that knew how to pick my battles also realized that I was up against two very, _very_ stubborn idiots who were 'in love' with each other.

I scowled at the very notion of such a thing.

"Oi!" Speak of the devil… "What are you doing out here, Kaede-gaki?! Kikyo's worried sick!"

I halted in my perusal of the rough path back to the village before me and glared up into the bows of a maple tree, gesturing to the direction I trekked expletively. "Where does it _look_ like I'm going!? Timbuktu?" I rolled my eyes at his puzzled expression with a slight shake of my head. "Did _she_ send you?"

He huffed, crouching on the branch and crossing his arms in his sleeves, petulantly refusing to meet my eyes and avoiding the question. "Keh… What's the deal with you and your sister anyway? Your relationship is bizarre."

For a second, I examined the relationship between me and Kikyo in connotation to the word 'bizarre,' then I pictured Inuyasha and Sesshomaru and burst out laughing. "Haha! 'Bizarre!' You're one to talk! At least we don't try to kill each other every time we cross paths."

Then I proceeded to turn and keep walking, giggling to myself as I went despite his protest of, "Hey! That's completely different! You don't even know what you're talking about!" When I all but ignored him with a simple, knowing '_hmph_,_'_ and continued on down the path, he huffed again and traversed the branches aerodynamically until he was able to drop down beside me, falling into step without missing a beat. It was then he grumbled, "You're _creepy_ when you say shit like that… Is it some freaky miko thing?"

It was the first time he actually addressed it directly with me. It was a bit of an understanding between the two of us that I knew a lot more than I let on. I didn't exactly filter my thoughts when I was around him. Really, because he already _knew_ that I knew what I knew, so why sensor it? He sure as hell didn't sensor himself when he was around me, and I appreciated it. Sure, maybe we weren't exactly the most forthcoming pair in the universe, but at least we were honest with each other where it counted…mostly.

So, I told the truth. "No. Not a miko thing. It's more just a Kaede-the-Worst-Miko-Ever thing."

"Ya ever gonna tell me what 'it' is?" he prompted pointedly, eying me with narrowed, luminous eyes.

"Nope." We were being honest here, after all. "Probably not."

I heard him growl deep in his throat and my hackles went up a bit as he bit out harshly, "You _knew_ me before you even met me! You knew I would meet Kikyo! _Why did you tell me to stay away from her_!? Huh!?"

I halted in my tracks, staring straight at the ground as my mind froze. Slowly, my gaze moved to take in his strained form, muscles tensed, as if staring down some fierce youkai instead of a twelve-year-old girl, eyes gleaming with determination—that same look he got whenever he protected my sister. And for the first time, I _really_ saw him.

…He was smarter than I gave him credit for.

Finally, after a long, drawn out silence, I admitted bluntly, "If I don't kill the spider demon who gave me this—" here I pointed out the nasty scar tissue on the junction between my neck and shoulder "—Kikyo _will_ die." I paused as his eyes widened, allowing him to take this in before I continued in a subdued tone, "I don't know how…or when. But if you being here means what I think it means…" I shook my head and broke off. "Your presence just makes it seem like things are hurtling towards an inevitable conclusion. Let's just say from the moment I first saw you, it was like an omen of death began to hang over my sister. It gets heavier every time I look at you because I feel like time is running out." Another silence, and for the first time, I looked upon him with regret in my eyes. "It's nothing personal, Inuyasha, but for all intents and purposes…I can't stand the sight of you."

He returned my stare intensely for another moment before turning away to concentrate on the path before us. Then he crossed his arms behind his head with his usual unconcerned façade and addressed the bits of sky between the thinning bows overhead. "Feh… Guess I can see how you feel that way, now that things finally make some sort of sense with you. Thanks for telling me, Brat."

I blinked at him. He seemed to be taking things fairly well, considering…

Then his eyes flashed, and the smirk on his face widened into something I could only describe as murderous. "Now…tell me what you know about that fucking spider."

The tone of his voice garnered no argument, and I sighed. "You're going to try and kill it too, I gather?"

"Ain't gonna be no '_try'_…" He left the implications of that to speak for themselves.

I frowned, but shrugged. It couldn't hurt to have another pair of eyes—and a rather good nose—at work on tracking down Mini-Naraku. Resigned, I tugged on his sleeve, pulling him over into an alcove next to the babbling brook we'd been following. "Alright then. First things first: It's poisonous. The little bastard's tiny, but it's got a nasty bite—and it's _fast_. If you're going to go to town on it, then let's assume you're going to get poisoned at some point or another too. Sit—" I motioned towards the bank of the brook.

He scowled at the word choice. "I'm not a _dog_—"

I rolled my eyes dramatically and cut him off, "Don't argue with me for once, and just _do it_ for the love of _god_—you are so stubborn! You wanna get poisoned and die, or do you want me to fix it so you don't?!"

Eventually, he did as instructed, albeit reluctantly. Holding a clawed hand out for inspection, he questioned, "So, how does this work?"

"The little shit poisoned me, remember?" I pointed to the scar that attested to this fact for emphasis. "I managed to neutralize it with my reiki though, so even though it's still in my system, it doesn't bother me. I'm going to gradually introduce the poison into your system and get it to do the same for you."

"You're going to do WHAT?!" He attempted to snatch his hand back, but I held firm and eyed him angrily.

"Don't be such a whiner! I don't know what you're complaining about! _I'm_ the one who got the full blast of it!" I wrestled his wrist towards me insistently and stung him a bit with my reiki as a reprimand when he still struggled. "It's just a drop. You're tough. You'll be _fine_, ya great big crybaby…" I grumbled as I searched for a vein, ignoring his protests and pushing his sleeve up, poking and prodding until I found one in the crook of his elbow. Leveling him with one last glare that _dared_ him to put up further resistance I produced a tiny knife from my sash I usually used for carving and other such delicate tasks requiring precision. "Hold still, and quit growling at me, or I might just be inclined to cut somewhere _else_…"

He went slightly pale at the thought, and because he didn't seem to know whether I was serious or not, bared his arm with another 'Keh!' and looked away. Really…he was worse than a little kid getting a booster shot. Rolling my eyes again, I carefully made an incision about a centimeter in length, then sighed. Next was the hard part. Closing my eyes, I painstakingly sought out the place where the spider's poison had rooted itself in my system. No matter how many how many times I purged it, it always seemed to produce more. This was the first time I attempted to control it directly.

It was gross. Like, literally, _sickeningly_ gross. I wanted to puke it was so bad. Naraku's poison didn't like being manipulated, that was for sure. But it was in _my_ body. And as far as I was concerned, anything that entered _my_ body was _mine_. Like it or not, it was now a part of me. And as such, I gritted my teeth against the nausea and willed it to my fingertips. This probably wasn't the most sanitary of methods to do this, but then again—medieval Japan. It wasn't exactly the most sanitary of eras to begin with.

Sighing in exasperation at how surprisingly wimpy the inu-hanyo was being over the whole issue, I decided to just get it over with as quickly as possible, pressing the bead of blackish ichor into the cut and healing the skin overtop of it in one quick swipe. Healing was not something I preferred to do, but I had to admit I was getting better at it. With more knowledge, and a little bit of creative ingenuity, I might even be able to do something useful with my useless reiki nature.

Inuyasha cracked open an eye to survey the problem area, and seemed a bit surprised. "Hey, that wasn't so bad!"

I sent him a longsuffering stare that he avoided flawlessly. "Don't get too excited. I'm not a hundred percent on hanyo immunization rates, but I'll take my best guess and dose you once every other day for a couple of months—excluding your special nights. That could be…bad."

"Bad? BAD?!" he exclaimed, waving his arms for emphasis. "Are you trying to fucking kill me?!"

"If you were _listening_," I told him through grated teeth, "I just told you that I'm trying to _avoid_ that! Besides, even if you _did_ get poisoned on your human night, I wouldn't let you die! If I could handle it, so can you. Just trust me, okay?"

"Feh… Kinda hard to do considering I feel like you're gonna stab me in the back every time I turn around!"

"Believe me," I told him with a deadpan expression. "If I was going to stab you in the back, I would've done it already…with an arrow. You and I both know I could've. But I didn't. So stop complaining already. We've got bigger problems." I sighed, holding my head in my hands. "Killing the spider notwithstanding…there's still the jewel. Where you cut off one head, ten more grow back in its place… When the hell is it going to end?"

He went real quiet—quiet enough that I looked up at him in question. "…I know how to get rid of the jewel."

I blinked at him dubiously. "You do, do you? I'll bite. What do you think you know?"

Scowling at the condescending tone, he crossed his arms over his chest and looked away from me. Then, in an uncharacteristically subdued tone, he explained, "If I wish to become a human, the jewel will be purified and disappear."

Slowly, an almost unidentifiably emotion seeped in to pool in my gut like acid—a mixture of rage and indignation, but not for myself. No. It was for him. Because even though we didn't exactly get along, I still held that modicum of respect and hero worship buried deep, deep down under my own insurmountable pride. Soft as a threat, I whispered, "…Did _Kikyo_ tell you that?"

"Yeah," he said defensively, with a slight blush to his cheeks. "What of it? She's right, isn't she?"

"No…" I seethed, my eyes narrowing calculatedly in a dead serious expression. "She's _not_."

Carefully, as if stepping around landmines—Inuyasha knew how the two of us could get—he asked, "…What do you mean, Kaede?"

"Tell me this, Inuyasha:" My eyes flicked back to him with a flash of anger, and I shot the question at him heatedly, "How is wishing to become a human any different than wishing to become a demon?" Almost vindictively, as if fueled by the dumbfounded look on his face, I answered on my own. "Sorry, that's a trick question. See, there _is_ no difference."

Face contorting into one of heated frustration, he shot back, "_No difference_—that's bullshit! It's _completely_ different—"

"Oh, yes, my mistake. The outcomes themselves would be quite distinct, I imagine. Tell me, how old are you exactly, Inuyasha?" I asked in a conversational tone.

The question, if not the entire conversation itself, seemed to throw him for a loop. His face flushed red. "Wha—What the heck does that have to do with anything!?"

"And I used to think only _women_ were self-conscious about their age…" I rolled my eyes at him. "Just answer the damn question."

"I—I—" He seemed really stressed out. Finally, he blurted, "I don't know, okay! I stopped counting at a hundred and fifty! It's gotta be more than that…" He rubbed his head and seemed to be counting off numbers on his fingers in a futile attempt to remember.

I stared at him pointedly. "Hm. That so? Funny. The oldest human I know of _died_ at a hundred and twelve something. What do you think would happen if _you_ became human?" His eyes widened exponentially and I watched as his face paled slightly. "And how many years do you think it took for your brother, or your father to control themselves and their youkai blood well enough not to go on a howling rampage? A hundred? Two hundred? Either way, getting hit by a full demonic transformation from being a hanyo to something like that is bound to have…nasty consequences. You'll probably wake up one day with blood all over you and have no idea how it got there—"

"Enough already! I get it!" He cut me off, veiled horror and disgust reflected in his yellow orbs.

"Do you?" I asked quietly. "They call the jewel cursed for a _reason_, Inuyasha. It's almost _alive_, and it has a will of its own. It likes to find 'loopholes.' It finds the worst possible, even with the purest of wishes. A youkai who wishes to become human will become just that…with all the long years they lived under their belt to show for it. A human who wishes to become a demon will become a _monster_. One who wishes for eternal life will live for eternity, but will be plagued for the rest of their existence to watch all their loved ones die in the most gruesome of ways—" I broke off, shaking my head slowly. "The point is…a wish is selfish by nature. Even if I wished for the jewel to vanish and do nothing, I'd be doing it for my own selfish purposes, therefore it would always find a way to come back. Only someone of a perfectly pure heart, and immense spiritual power can make that thing disappear for good. No one else. Now do you understand?"

Slowly, after a long, uncomfortable silence, he nodded. "…Yeah." He then fixed his stare on the motion of the water tumbling over the stones in the creek bed, and neither of us moved for a long time. His disappointment was almost palpable—a living entity in the air.

Clenching and unclenching my hands, I hesitated before speaking again. But it was on my mind, and it had to be said. "You're alright, ya know? I might not like you very much, but you're fine just the way you are. And don't let anyone tell you different. Especially not _her_." I frowned deeply. "Love's not _supposed_ to be perfect. So if she really loves you, she'll figure out a way to deal with it. We—_I_ wouldn't have you any other way. So don't go trying to change yourself just because of some girl—"

An arm wrapping around my shoulders and hugging me closely to his side abruptly halted my uncharacteristic stuttering. The affectionate one-armed squeeze betrayed his rough words. "Anyone ever tell ya you talk too much, Kid?" Without waiting for my flustered response, he pulled me up with him and tugged me along. "Come on. Kikyo said that if we took too long she was going to try and cook something." At that, we both shivered, but then he laughed, "You're the only one who can make anything halfway decent around here! What are you going to make tonight? Is it that special stew? You're going to make that, right? Right?"

Pushing aside my shock at his friendly attitude, a slight smirk adorned my lips as I couldn't help but taunt him with, "Only if you '_beg'_ me for it…"

"Fuck that. Come on! I was poisoned today! Give me a break, Kaede-gaki!" he complained loudly as I laughed in his face. When we emerged from the tree line, a cool spring wind came up to greet us as we crested the grassy hill overlooking the town. Kikyo could be seen at its base, surrounded by village younglings, no doubt gathering herbs for whatever foul concoction she planned on creating in my absence. She waved at us with deceptive obliviousness on her perpetually serene countenance.

Thank heavens we made it back on time. The damage could have been catastrophic.

The crisis was thankfully averted over a steaming pot of venison stew I had allowed Kikyo no part in the making of. Inuyasha teased her for her abysmal cooking skills, and actually got her laughing for the first time in I don't even know when. It was contagious, and soon enough, all three of us were struggling not to choke on our dinner. He truly knew how to make her happy…which I then realized was just as important as keeping her alive.

Slowly, gradually, irrevocably…my little family unit of two had expanded quite unexpectedly to include three.

I was awoken by a strange feeling of unease that night, and a compulsion to look at the stars. When Hikomaru, Kogi's little brother, showed up in a frenzy, nearly ambushing me and tempting me to purify his tail off just on principle, the dark feeling in my chest grew heavier. Something was wrong.

"Lady Miko! Lady Miko, please, you must come—"

"What is it?" I demanded sharply, my heart picking up in my chest.

"It's Aniue, he—he's—"

Without another word, I flew off into the forest faster than I could remember running in my life.

* * *

**Okay, so, this is another pretty rough chapter, and a little bit shorter than usual, but I'm trying here.**

**A bit of an Inuyasha moment for Inu-hanyo fans. Tell me if anything seemed OOC.**

**And a slightly closer look at Kaede's sinister plans for poor Kogi...although at this point, it seems like she might be having second thoughts? Is there a tender heart hidden somewhere in that girl...?**

**HA. Yeah right.**


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